Mint Theater Company is the Off Broadway equivalent of Antiques Roadshow. Several among the forgotten plays that Mint discovers prove to be treasures, a few others are duds and the majority of them are interesting pieces variously reflecting their cultures and times. Mint’s new production, Garside’s Career, which opened on Thursday at Theatre Row, is a case in the latter point.
An English realist portrait of a very ambitious young man, Garside’s Career was composed shortly before World War I by Harold Brighouse, whose best known play among 30 others is the delightful Hobson’s Choice. Like that 1914 comedy about a tyrannical shoe store proprietor whose daughter rebels to wed his best cobbler, Garside’s Career involves mostly working class people in the industrial towns of Lancashire in northwestern England, where Brighouse was raised.
A skilled mechanic in his early 20s, Peter Garside was encouraged by Margaret, his schoolteacher sweetheart, to get a university degree. The industrious Garside also has cultivated skills as a public speaker advocating the labor movement and he loves it. “You don’t know the glorious sensation of holding a crowd in the hollow of your hand, mastering it, doing what you like with it,” Garside declares. The no-nonsense Margaret is not enthused about Garside’s “silver-tongued” proclivities, observing, “The itch to speak is like the itch to drink, except that it’s cheaper to talk yourself tipsy.”
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
When Garside’s gift for gab gets him backed for a seat in Parliament, Margaret breaks off their engagement. So Garside is vulnerable to the come-hither looks from Gladys, a restless provincial debutante enraptured by his speechifying. Elected an MP and living it up in London, the immature Garside carelessly neglects his duties and – well, it’s a swift rise-and-fall drama. Neatly constructed by Brighouse in four episodes and performed as two acts here, Garside’s Career features individuals whose talk and personal attitudes to some extent illuminate British class struggles of the 1900-1914 period. Loudest among Garside’s supporters, a comical yet powerful figure named Karl Marx Jones spews radical remarks about marriage and capital. Gladys’ brother, Freddie, represents a clueless though amiable idle class while Lady Mottram, their redoubtable old mater, uses her social clout to combat Garside’s candidacy and to punish Margaret’s outspoken campaign activities.
Scarcely a long-lost masterpiece, but nevertheless a sturdy, interestingly detailed work peopled by plausible characters, Garside’s Career is best enjoyed by Mint regulars sympathetic to the period conventions of vintage drama. The play is served well by director Matt Dickson, whose measured staging smoothly rolls it out. Working with Mint’s modest budget, set designers Christopher Swader and Justin Swader provide an aptly-chosen array of furniture and scenic pieces (plus a potted palm) necessary to create three interiors for a tidy cottage, a drawing room and a posh London flat. Before and after their scenes, these environs are reassembled by the nine-actor company who lighten their labors by singing folk songs and anthems like “Solidarity Forever.” The first act packs a rousing finish as Garside addresses a mob of mill workers whose (offstage) tumult is whipped up effectively by lighting designer Yiyuan Li and sound designer Carsen Joenk.
Mint’s production is energized by an appealing performance by the bright-eyed, boyish Daniel Marconi as Garside, who sports Van Dyke whiskers and a cheerful nature that grows cynical with success and turns sour later when his career hits the skids. Amelia White depicts Garside’s ever-loyal mother with a feisty quality that makes the humorous most of how she obviously thinks Margaret is not good enough for her son. Madeline Seidman’s sober yet plucky Margaret is tested even further by a face-off with haughty Lady Mottram, given an imposing presence by Melissa Maxwell. It is odd how designer Kindall Almond, whose circa 1910 clothes look good on everyone else, overdresses Sara Haider so unattractively as Gladys, a small town siren intent on a grander world; possibly it’s a comment on Gladys’ dubious character. Avery Whitted and Michael Schantz respectively and sharply contrast as sillyass Freddie and rowdy Karl Marx Jones. Author Harold Brighouse, who once described himself as “essentially a regional writer,” may be telling a pleasantly familiar story in Garside’s Career, but the accents and period attitudes of his varied Lancashire folk lend charm. Mint’s production does by it all nicely.
Garside’s Career opened February 20, 2025, at Theatre Row and runs through March 15. Tickets and information: minttheater.org
